A randomly comprehensive survey of extraordinary movie experiences from the art house to the grindhouse, featuring the good, the bad, the ugly, but not the boring or the banal.

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Now Playing: FEB. 8, 1962

A "world premiere" is the highlight in Miami tonight, and with one of the stars of the movie in attendance, this isn't just hype for a wide release. Forgive the small size; it was too big an ad to fit in the Google News Archive window at any larger size.

I don't have access to enough papers to know whether Doris and Rock were doing similar duty elsewhere -- somehow I suspect not, but Randall was still trying to solidify his standing as a movie star. That's not how he's remembered, but them's the breaks. The film itself's another reminder, along with Madison Avenue, of how the age of Mad Men was itself fascinated by the mystique of the "hidden persuaders" of the ad business. To say the least, that fascination didn't result in much insight. To make up for the small ad, here's a trailer from dorisdaynet12.

Up in Pittsburgh, the big event movie of last year is just arriving in town.

In those days a prestige film like West Side Story was treated the way exhibitors treat an IMAX or 3D film today. It was an occasion to charge higher prices -- and while reserving your seat is an option nowadays, you'll notice it was mandatory then. Big pictures like El Cid, the Nicholas Ray King of Kings and Judgment at Nuremberg were getting similar treatment 50 years ago. "Now at popular prices" was a common phrase in movie advertising then, but it might not be heard for these films for months to come.

Instead of the usual re-release trailer that runs on TCM -- the one that claims that "unlike other classics, West Side Story grows younger" -- here's an original teaser trailer, uploaded by YarcoTV.

Finally for now, in Youngstown OH:

What we have here is a U.S.-West German anti-communist co-production by the director of Cool Hand Luke and The Amityville Horror. It deals with an East German musical prodigy whose advancement depends on his answering "Question 7" correctly -- which would mean to renounce his religion and repudiate his minister father. According to the Wikipedia synopsis, the kid gets an alternate no-strings-attached opportunity but his dad persuades him to turn it down because accepting this would make the lad a propaganda tool. Everything those Commies do is propaganda, or so says this propaganda film. There's no trace of it online, regrettably.